{"id":208426,"date":"2025-03-12T07:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T12:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/medical-infusion-bags-can-release-microplastics-study-shows"},"modified":"2025-03-12T07:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T12:21:07","slug":"medical-infusion-bags-can-release-microplastics-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/medical-infusion-bags-can-release-microplastics-study-shows","title":{"rendered":"Medical infusion bags can release microplastics, study shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/medical-infusion-bags-can-release-microplastics-study-shows.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Microplastics have been found almost everywhere that scientists have looked for them. Now, according to research <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/envhealth.4c00210\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Environment &amp; Health<\/i>, these bits of plastic\u2014from 1 to 62 micrometers long\u2014are present in the filtered solutions used for medical intravenous (IV) infusions. The researchers estimate that thousands of plastic particles could be delivered directly to a person\u2019s bloodstream from a single 8.4-ounce (250-milliliter) bag of infusion fluid.<\/p>\n<p>In clinical settings, IV infusions are packaged in individual plastic pouches and deliver water, electrolytes, nutrients or medicine to patients. The base of these infusions is a <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/saline+solution\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">saline solution<\/a> that contains filtered water and enough salt to match the content of human blood. Research from the 1970s suggests IV fluid bags can contain solid particles, but few scientists have followed up on what those particles are made of.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers Liwu Zhang, Ventsislav Kolev Valev and colleagues suspected that these particles could be microplastics that\u2014upon <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/infusion\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">infusion <\/a>\u2014would enter the recipient\u2019s bloodstream and potentially cause <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/negative+health+effects\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">negative health effects<\/a>. So, they set out to analyze the types and amounts of particles in commercial IV fluid bags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microplastics have been found almost everywhere that scientists have looked for them. Now, according to research published in Environment &amp; Health, these bits of plastic\u2014from 1 to 62 micrometers long\u2014are present in the filtered solutions used for medical intravenous (IV) infusions. The researchers estimate that thousands of plastic particles could be delivered directly to a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}